Many years ago I attended a seminar at a large church in Jackson, Mississippi and afterwards there was a party at one of the member’s houses. A large number of us were gathered around talking, and I saw a large beautiful oil painting of a young-adult man over the fireplace mantle. With the group standing around, I said to the host, “That is a beautiful portrait. Who is it of?” “It is my son…he died many years ago…he was a hero.” He told all of us the story of how his very noble and brave son was fishing at the spill way at Ross Barnet Reservoir and a little boy fell in the fast moving rapid and his son jumped into the water to save the boy, but bumped his head and died. He was a hero.
Later on, when we were talking, just the two of us, I said to him, “How do you go on after you lose your son?” And in private he said to me tearfully, “You don’t ever get over it, you learn to go on.”
What stood out for me was the way he spoke differently in public and then in private. In public he said with pride, “He is a hero.” In private he said with tears, “You don’t ever get over it.” And of course both are true. But there is a difference in how we present ourselves when we are in public and when we are in private. There is our public self and then there is our private self. There is the person we present to the world and then there is the more reserved and hidden person we reveal only carefully, if at all.
I think about this split between the public and the private as I read about King David in our scripture this morning. There is the great and powerful King David who is also a father. And in our scripture this morning – those two roles are very much at odds.
David was a very great and powerful king, but we discover in 2 Samuel that he was not a very good father. For those who may have forgotten the story, Absalom was the son of David who killed his brother because his brother had raped his sister and then Absalom fled the country. Eventually, his father allowed Absalom back into the kingdom, but for a time David refuses Absalom’s pleas to see him. David only calls him, “the young man, Absalom,” even though the text makes it very clear that David still loves his son.
In time, Absalom staged a coup to over-throw David from the throne and he succeeds. But even while he is in flight, David has his own loyal army and he sends the army out to fight the army of Israel and his son Absalom. And in the battle, against David’s orders, the general and his men kill Absalom while he is hanging in tree branches. Proudly, one of the soldiers in his army comes to David and says, “Your enemies have been defeated and the traitor, Absalom is dead.” You might think David the powerful King would be celebrate his kingdom has been restored, but here is what we hear:
O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom!
Would I had died instead of you,
O Absalom, my son, my son!
Perhaps no poet or modern play writer could have penned words so dramatic or so utterly wrenching as these. The lines of David ring out like something Shakespeare might have put on the lips of King Lear. You do not have to know anything about King David and his troubled relationship with his son, Absalom to feel pity. These words resonate with anyone who has ever been a parent and allow their child to get so deep in their hearts.
I found Frederick Buechner’s words helpful:
“He meant it, of course. If he could have done the boy’s dying for him, he would have done it. If he could have paid the price for the boy’s betrayal, he would have paid it. If he could have given his own life to make the boy alive again, he would have given it. But even a king can’t do things like that. As later history was to prove, it takes a God.”
One of the reasons we are so drawn to David as a Biblical figure is that he is so human. He expresses his emotions. He stays with his own truth. But everyone is not happy about this. One of his head generals, Joab, comes to him and says, “Why are you crying??? Why are you blubber faced over this traitor who sought your life, your wives, and your kingdom??? Twenty thousand Israelites are in the fields dead and you are shaming the soldiers who risk their lives for you! You would be happy that Absalom were alive today and we were all dead!
Joab is the “realist,” the one looking after the public good. It is time to wipe the tears off your face, put on your best smile, fix yourself up, get out there on that balcony, and celebrate with your troops! In other words, swallow your pain, and be responsible.
Of course there is some truth to what Joab is saying. We have our responsibilities and the tragic or difficult events of our lives do not lessen those. There are other people we love. There are others who need and depend on us. Even though a part of us does die with our losses, but not everything needs to die. And so David does get out on that balcony and he does address his troops.
Do you see why this is one of our most treasured and valuable stories? Do you see why some of our greatest writers, like William Faulkner, can base an entire book themes of this tragic tale? It is a reflection of life. This story is our story. We all have our public and our private selves. We have the person that everyone sees and knows and we have the person that we keep more out of sight. There is the responsible self, the person that needs to get up in the morning and go through the paces, and there are our struggles, our doubts, and our pain.
There is nothing wrong about this. There is a time in our lives when we need a Joab to say to us, time to get up and get going, time to be a responsible human being and deal with the reality this day has for you. If you forget reality, more disaster will come your way. But my experience in most people’s lives is that Joab is too strong a voice in their lives. There are too many people like Joab saying to us, “put away your crying and your suffering, and just get on with life. Your pain and your struggle are not welcome here!” There are too many messages that shame us into burying what in reality is our common struggle.
As I think about this, I think of the young married couple that lived in the very next apartment to me when I was serving my first church. They were a loving couple, very nice people who had just joined the church and had not been married for so long. One Sunday morning, I woke up to the sounds of angry voices getting louder and louder. They were really at it. I got to church early, went to the adult Sunday School class and in they walk – both of them so nicely dressed, with smile plastered on their faces as if nothing had happened.
We had a nicely prepared biblical lesson that day. Everyone discussed the scripture and nodded in agreement with the platitude we are suppose to agree to in our faith. But more mature now, I look back at that day and wonder, what would have happened if we had made church a safe enough place where that couple could have come in that day and said something like: “It has been one lousy day! We started the morning out with a loud argument over something that now seems stupid. This first year of marriage is not AT ALL what we thought was going to be. Anybody else know what I mean?” I guarantee you it would have been a LOT more interesting Sunday school lesson, maybe even transformative.
I sometimes wonder what would happen in the middle of a war, where both sides are shooting at each other, blowing each other up because leaders far away from the front have decided that national interests are at stake, what would happen if soldiers stopped shooting for a day, sat down and traded the pictures of the children they have at home and love. What if they talked about the life they hope to have, if they ever get home. What if they could actually share from the pain of their lives and talk about the losses they have experienced. Could they then pick up their guns again the next day and start shooting?
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “If I could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
David knew something that his general Joab did not know. Transformation does not come from kings covering up their emotions, dressing themselves in personas of invulnerability, and getting back to being “responsible.” As Walter Brueggemann says, change, new life, comes from grieving fathers who have owned the pain in their hearts enough to see how they would do things differently.
It is only when we face our pain that we grow in our capacity to love. It is only in sharing our pain that we create a more human and loving community. Walter Brueggemann also says, that what makes the Church so important and so dangerous in our society is that we are the ones who are called to notice and to treasure and to pay attention to the hurt underneath and to see that in that hurt is precisely where hope comes from.
This is why the emblem of our faith is the cross – the symbol of suffering and shame. On the cross, Jesus brings out the private and makes it public. Naked and broken on a rugged piece of wood, Jesus says to us “all the world’s pain matters, because I have redeemed it and transformed it into life.” Let us be the ones who will attest to the world that even in pain – God makes all things new. Amen.
Rev. Allen Mothershed, First Congregational Church, Moline, August 9, 2009
Walter Brueggemann, “Slogans – And Hurts Underneath,” February 16, 1985, Sermons from Duke Chapel, ed. William Williman, p. 246-250. This opening story was sparked in my memory by a similar one by Brueggemann. I am indebted to Dr. Brueggemann for his interpretation of this story of David and direction of this sermon.
Ibid, p. 249.
Ibid, p. 249.